Posts made by Narvik

A Japanese base in Madagaskar would have closed the US Lend/Lease route named the Persian Corridor from US to USSR, as well as the Middle East oil going the other way, so I dont think US would allowed that. In fact UK did attack the Vichy garrison there in May 1942, to deny Japan access to Madagaskar. Its a pretty long way from Japan, so I cant figure how they should have done it, its hardly doable in an A&A game, and in the real world you got the supply chain too

I cant find anything yet about how purchasing and mobilization of new units work. Only some combat examples, at Kickstarter and BGG. So, I am watching this documentary about the war in Nam, and have come to 1965, so my assumptions could be wrong. But fact is, the military advisors that have been asked so far, claim that the main problem was, that if you killed one enemy communist, then that one enemy would be replaced. But, and this is vital, if you killed one innocent, then 10 new people would join Viet Cong. To me this look like a zombie apocalypse. Kill one enemy unit, and your opponent can mobilize one new unit. But burn a civillian village and your opponent can mobilize 10 new units. Is this taken care of in the Rulebook ? Because about the Vietcong unit, it says on Kickstarter that its ability were to ambush, disperse, evade and control the rural population, and that this ability is what forced USA to keep sending units, and finally lose the war. This is wrong, it was the killing of innocents that turned people to join VC and then the growth of VC forced USA to keep sending troops.

I believe this case should be covered in the game mechanic. If one or more Red units is in a territory, you should have several options. You can bomb that territory and automatically kill every units in it, but then the Red team can mobilize 10 new Red units for each casualty, like you kill 2 Red units by bombing, and the Red mobilize 20 new units. Or, you can target the Red unit, but with low odds, like a 1 on a 6D is a hit. But if you succeed and roll a 1, and that one Red unit is killed, the Red team can not replace it. So basically carpet bombing is very efficient on the battlefield, but with huge backfire in the long run. Targeting is difficult and takes a lot of work, but it pays off in the long run.
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The typical VC strategy was to let a VC sniper fire from an innocent village. If he hit anything or killed any US troops was not important. Then ARVN and US troops would always respond by burning that innocent village down. Then the surviving families and neighbors of that ruined village would join VC. It was basically this VC purchase and mobilize new units strategy that made USA lose the war, because we kept responding with wrong strategy. We should have targeted that VC sniper, not the entire population.  Its like when a brown-haired person steal a car, you dont hang every brown-haired persons in that neighborhood, because that is not justice, but it is a sure way to turn every brown-haired persons of the entire world against you. You can do it if you are Hitler and want to ethnically cleanse the world from brown-haired people, but if you do it by accident, like the leaders did back in the -60ies, and you dont have any strategies to deal with it, then you lose

@jim010:

I have my set pre ordered. After all these years!

The Richelieau is still listed

Sure it is listed, but the pic show a La Galissonniere light cruiser, that is not on the list. Explain this……

But where is the Richeli battleship ?

@djensen:

I’m not censoring anything. If you have subjective complaints, put them all here in this thread. If you have constructive criticism, start a new thread.

Again, when the newbies arrive to learn more about AAZ and other A&A games, I want them to see a welcoming community. Seeing a bunch of posts of people hating on zombies, might turn people away.

You got some strong points here, and I want to change my stand.

@taamvan:

The techs mostly “reskin” all of one team’s units of one type so to make custom pieces in one color would cause a lot of confusion.   However, a full new ($100?) set of minis for all the teams with 10 copies of custom tanks, infantry transports etc. will no doubt be offered by Christmas.

WOTC could make Expansion Packs like they did with the Minis, and make lots of money, I bet the A&A community would love it

@djensen:

Has anybody here tried to produce a game? Game pieces? Or even run a business?

I think a chainsaw tank mini is an awesome idea but there are tradeoffs. Yes, you and I would pay extra but there are a bunch of die hard A&A a-holes (sorry guys but the haters are acting like jerks) who are not even going to buy one copy. If you price it too high, then newcomers to A&A won’t buy and then you guarantee a flop.

Chainsaw tanks is a great opportunity for the community to create and sell their own. I’ll be ready to buy one from Combat Miniatures should they chose to make one, hint hint.

I belive you missed my point. A lot of the A&A fans are piece junkies, they would purchase any A&A game if it has new pieces that can be fairly used in their customized games. You can make a simple game with F4F fighter for the p38, or a Tiger tank, or a Hood battleship, and people would buy that game just for the new pieces. I figure that a Chainsaw Tank could be used to clear minefields or that kind of thing in a non-zombie game. I know that this plastic pieces cost from less to nothing, so I figure that WOTC could have made good money if they had a better understanding of the motivation of the piece junkies that spend a lot of money on this games. I belive it is poor business policy to target a game like this to a narrow audience, when it could reach all the A&A community just by including some Panzer IV sculpts, or a Mustang fighter for US. Dont confuse this with negativity, it is ment to be a rational advice.

@djensen:

I’m not a super fan of zombies but I do like games. I think the zombie cards add a counter-balance when you have a bad day with the dice. The problem is that everybody is so focused on the theme that you’re all blind to well thought out game mechanics. I’m so sick of the negativity, I’m very tempted to limit subjective (i.e., “zombies are dumb and you’re dumb”) criticisms of the game to one or maybe zero threads.

If you think there is something specifically broken about the map, setup, rules, or mechanics. I want t read about that.

I do understand how you can be sick of too much negativity, but limits or censorship is never the way to go, and not in the America we know and love. It is less than 10 persons that have posted negative waves on this topic, but because they are spamming, it feels like they are the majority. The best ways to deal with this are either to ignore it, or counter it with facts. When the game is out on the marked and people start playing it, I bet the negativity will disappear. Just hang on, man, and dont ruin this place with censorship.

@CWO:

…. and two American fighter units represented by two different sculpts (though their cost and characteristics in the rules were identical).Â

Correct, One of the designers said he could not live with an Army P 38 Lighting as a carrier based plane, so they gave us 6 carrier based fighters too. Those were the days…

@Karl7:

Pacific 2001  – not listed

Correct, Pacific 2001 and Europe 1999, the two best A&A games, currently out of print, too sad.

Pacific 2001 was the first game with convoy zones, naval bases and air bases, and my favorite, the CAP, Combat Air Patrol, the current scrambling is by far not that good.

And the best, they were playable, you could play it every where, you did not need a dedicated basement like when you play G40, or a 6 feet table. Also, the map was focused on the spot where the war actually happened. No Africa and no South America. Too sad its out of print

For starters, I dont see any official A&A games with a 1939 start, so that must be either some variants or the HBG game. In case you talk about the HBG game, I agree that rules are not very brilliant. Anyway, I figure there could be a mainstream rule that would be in effect no matter when the game start. People and national leaders did not act very different in 1942 from what they would have done in 1939. The general pattern seems to be, that the leaders of Great Powers will do what benefits them the most, like Chamberlain had some kind of collusion with the nazi leaders, while Churchill was in fact an allied with the commies. Both Chamberlain and Churchill were capitalists, but had no problems cooperating with other ideologies if they could benefit from it. To the minor neutral nations, the pattern seems to be, they would stay out of the war as long as possible, but if they had to choose, they would obey the strongest power, not a weak and losing one.

Another pattern is, that when a major power attacked and occupied part of a minor neutral nation, then that minor nation was likely to join the other side. Like when Russia captured Viborg, then Finland would become anti-Russian and join the first major power that was going to do something against Russia. Finlands first choice of allies would be Sweden or UK and France, but since that was impossible, it had to be Germany. When Germany lost, then Finland had to switch side and obey the strongest. Same with Romania, they had a pact with France, UK, Poland, Greece and Turkey in 1938, but when Russia captured Bessarabia, and UK and France could not protect them, then Romania had to join Germany. Later, when Germany was losing, then Romania had to join Russia. The OOB A&A rule for true neutrals are of course insane. There are no way that true neutral Sweden would have declared war on Germany if true neutral Angola or Bolivia had been attacked by Italy in the real world. As we know today, neutral Sweden did not go to war against Russia or Germany even when Finland, Norway and Denmark were attacked, so why should they go to war if some African or South American country was attacked ? That lame rule is designed to make the game scripted, and a bit for game balance too.

Then you talk about Yugoslavia. That is tricky. The ruler of Yugoslavia did sign the Berlin Pact in spring 1941, but then there was a coup, a new leader would grab the power, and suddenly Germany had to attack and occupy Yugoslavia. How do you model that in a simple game like A&A ? I know Eagle Games had a game named ATTACK !! some years ago, with diplomatic options like you could assasinate the leader of other nations, or make coups, and turn democratic countries into commies or fascists, and I think that serious hex and counter games has that too, like World in Flames, but it will complicate the game and it is impossible to find any casual player that want to play that game. If you want to play face to face with other people, you will have to play a simple game, like A&A 1942, or Risk, or Chess, or the Finnish game Star of Africa, which btw is one of my favorites when I was a kid.

Au contraire, I dont think action cards, like the ones from D-day, have a rational place in A&A. It is first a plastic miniatures war game. Played by people that want to realize a military power fantasy. If you love card games, maybe poker is more your alley ?

Even if the zombie theme missed the major fan base, I belive all evolution is good. In A&A zombies the purchase of units is moved from the start to phase 7. Now you can purchase and mobilize units in one phase, saving time. I also think that phase 8 collecting income should be at the start of phase 7, saving even more time, and avoid doble dipping of contestet territories. Just imagine how much time the casual player spend to calculate what units he may need at the end of the turn. That is taken care of now. The next time thief is the endless swapping of territories defended by 1 inf. The next edition can take care of that by collecting income in phase 7, before you purchase and mobilize. Then we can spend less time on administrating and more time on strategies.

Second, because the majority of casual players are narrow mind, they dont like when the game depart to much from the historical correct path, like a German navy crossing the Suez canal and sailing into the Pacific, even if it did so in WWI, making the majority of players follow a scripted game. They make house rules for Vichy France and collapse of Italy, or make rules to punish a Japanese Tank push to Moscow, even if that is exactly what the Axis should have done to win the war. Of course the players are not aware of this forced thoughts. But my point being, A&A Zombies will set the players free. We know for sure there were never recorded any zombies or UFO’s in the real WWII, so now the A&A game is no longer a re-enactment or simulation of WWII, but a new game with no mental borders or straight jackets.

Yes, they got lots of options. But my case was, that it was doable and smart to attack Russia from both sides. Of course, the German and Japanese Tanks could not meet in Moscow, like they used to do in A&A Classic, but they could have reached Irkutsk, grabbing a lot of oil and resources, while Germany pushed Stalin east of the Urals mountains. Then a minor Russia would be from the Archangel-Astrakhan line to Irkutsk in the east. The German High Command did in fact suggest this, but some admirals from the Japanese Navy declined the proposal, sabotaging the Khalgin Gol battle in 1939 to make the Russians look invincible, forcing Hirohito to follow the Pacific way. I’ll make a specific thread on this issue some day, stop derailing this thread. Not that anybody cares

@Imperious:

Japanese tanks driving down anywhere is greatly overrated. They could never form any supply line that could bring fuel and enough parts for a 4,000 drive to Moscow in the forest, even if they followed the trans-siberian railway. I value the maximum Japanese Logistical success at 50 miles. Any more than that and failure for them at least. If they used tricycles and each soldier carried maximum load, perhaps 100 miles.

You know, about 10 % of the Russian oil were in Sibir, and the Japanese could have refined it on location, you know, but they would need a little longer time, maybe a few years, but it was doable, the impossible just take a little longer time.

@suprise:

What if
Churchill didnt get elected or was killed, or if it was FDR in the same situation
Would the Axis have been able to win the war
Have fun

I belive it did not matter. Churchill and FDR were not dictators, they were not above the Palace of Westminster or Capitol Hill, even with no Winnie then Halifax would still have to listen to the public opinion, and so did FDR. All the other candidates at the 1940 election, like Wendell Willkie, Cordell Hull, Farley, Garner, Tydings, Wallace, Taft and Dewey, were not likely to follow a radically different policy than FDR did. They could not bypass Capitol Hill and declare a personal war, neither could they ignore any Axis threats to the national security. So bottom line is, democracies never have that great freedom of choices, they must obey the public opinion. Ian Kershaw is discussing this issues in his book Fateful Choices 2008. The only persons that could have made a difference were dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, they never listened to the opinion and would follow their own way. No Hitler and no Stalin ? Yes, the WWII would for sure turn out in a different way than it did historical. No FDR ? Wendell Willkie could have done nothing different than FDR did. USA would enter the war in dec 1941 like a train on a railway.

@Argothair:

I wonder why the US Navy changed its mind at that particular time –

You may find some answers in the book “Mr. Roosevelts Navy” by Patrick Abbazia, covering this time of decisions.

If Churchill had been killed by a Taxi driver in 1931, as Marc suggest, then Operation Pike would never have been launched. Churchill had a great desire for action, would bombard the Imperial Staff with crazy ideas, like Operation Catherine, sailing the Royal Navy into the Baltic Sea in a kamikaze raid, or the fiasco in Norway, or moving hundreds of Bombers to RAF Habbarye in Iraq, to be ready to bomb the Russian oilfields in Baku. With no Churchill there would be no Norwegian Debate, since it was Churchill that made the fiasco in Norway, and with the Bombers in UK and not in Iraq, the great 250 km long  traffic jam of 41 000 German Tanks and trucks from Group Kleist on the first days of the campaign in west, I am not sure France would fall in 4 weeks. Maybe no Churchill would be a short war ?